Bourbon, bluegrass, basketball, barbecue, and broodmares—consider these Kentucky’s five Bs. And in Lexington, with its uprising of microbreweries, “beer” completes a fine second-letter sextet. Suffice it to say, Kentucky is a state with its priorities straight.

When Dr. Charles Strub founded Santa Anita Park in 1934, he promised the skeptical community that he would never hold horse races on a Sunday. For the next 40 years, that promise became an unwritten rule followed by all of the tracks in California. So much so, in fact, that the California Horse Racing Board began enforcing the tradition by not issuing race dates to any tracks on Sundays.